Sun Bancorp Inc. of Vineland, N.J., is buying Advantage Bank of Branchburg, N.J., for $37 million.
Sun would enter Somerset County by acquiring Advantage and expand in Hunterdon County, where Sun has one branch.
All five branches of the $166 million-asset Advantage are in those counties -two in Hunterdon and three in Somerset.
Thomas A. Bracken, Sun's president and chief executive officer, said he has been eyeing Somerset and Hunterdon, both in central New Jersey, since joining the $3.3 billion-asset company four years ago.
Somerset's 2000 median household income of $76,933 was the highest in the country, according to the Census Bureau, and Hunterdon's was near the top.
The region "has a dynamic retail and commercial market, and myself and others in the management have done business there in our prior jobs," Mr. Bracken said in an interview Friday.
Peter G. Schoberl, Advantage's president and CEO, said his 6-year-old company has had growing pains and faces mounting regulatory compliance costs.
"I think from our perspective, to grow more it would require a lot of expense and new infrastructure," he said.
He said that Advantage and Sun are alike in their culture and operations and that he and Mr. Bracken have been friends for more than a decade.
The deal was announced Friday and is expected to close in the first quarter. Mr. Schoberl would become Sun's market executive in Somerset and Hunterdon, and Advantage's chairman, John Fallone, would join Sun's board.
Mr. Bracken was hired shortly after Sun was hit with an enforcement order. Since then it has turned itself around, hiring dozens of new executives and revamping its lending policy and technology infrastructure.
Advantage would be Sun's second acquisition under Mr. Bracken. It bought the $371 million-asset Community Bancorp of New Jersey in Freehold for $83 million in July 2004.
